Frozen food uses 10 times more energy to produce, and let’s not forget how much energy it costs to store. Fresh foods taste better and are better for you. Frozen and overcooked foods lose a lot of their vitamins and almost all of their taste. Buy locally grown and produced foods from area farmers markets or Whole Foods. The average meal in the United States travels 1,200 miles from the farm to your plate. Not only does buying locally help reduce the amount of energy required to grow and transport the food to you by 1/5, it keeps money in your local community, which is ALWAYS a good thing. More farms means fewer housing developments, which means more green space and less carbon dioxide emitted into the atmosphere. Try to make sure the farm you buy from is organic. Organic soils capture and store carbon dioxide at much higher levels than soils from conventional farms. If all of our corn and soybeans were grown organically, we’d remove 580 billion pounds of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere! Eat less meat. Methane is the second most significant greenhouse gas and cows are one of the greatest methane emitters. Their grassy diet and multiple stomachs cause them to produce methane, which they exhale with every breath. Besides all that, less meat is better for your health.
5 comments:
Dang!! Because I do not drive, i eat a lot of dried foods and some frozen, but I better cut down the bean count in my chili, lest i become rated as a mrthane emitter. :-(
We have a pretty low carbon footprint in our household already, primarily since we don't drive much. We bought our first car last week, but I pretty much walk or take public most places I go. We've also got the Terra Pass, which is an interesting project.
In general, I agree. Fresh, organic foods are better for you. Unfortunately there are a lot of people here in Chicago who have very limited access to such foods, either because of affordability or because of the distance between home and decent grocery stores (between which there are dozens of fast food restaurants and liquor stores). Let's face it, if you're living on slave wages, mac n cheese and spaghetti o's stretch a whole lot further than green beans and salad. If we simply adequately addressed poverty issues in this country, a lot of these tertiary problems would begin to resolve themselves.
Tomcat,
I think the chili is fine, but you might want to try growing some of your own veggies. Some can be grown on a windowsill, and others just need a small backyard.
Laura,
We've been working to reduce ours. We got a little lazy right after the baby was born, mostly because shopping time was cut drastically, so we occasionally had to buy things we wouldn't have. We make our own baby food from organic fruits and veggies.
When tv dinners are a buck apiece, I buy them. When top ramen is 10 for a buck, I buy them. No one thinks a dinner invitation to my house is a good thing.
I believe the future of global warming is this: those who can afford it will eat fresh, organic foods. Those who can't will eat cloned foods that are supposed to be safe, but aren't. Can you see the picture for this post?
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